Winning project funding for social development is tough, and there is growing pressure from different disciplines to get grants. Most of the projects fail to secure funding for their callings, ideas, and visions either due to flawed methodology, unmeasurable indicators, unrealistic budgets or narrow scope.

Caritas India with its 60 years of experience in implementing thousands of projects and programmes across the country with a funding grant from institutional donors, CSR and Government supported programmes. This expertise and skill were further shared with like-minded organisations in social work through a 3-day residential workshop on ‘project formulation’ from September 27- 29, 2022 at Karnataka Regional Organization for Social Service (KROSS), Bengaluru for the program managers/officers in social work.   Hosted under the banner of Caritas Institute of Development Action and Learning (CIDAL), 52 Participants from 13 States in India participated in this workshop.

The participants were given thorough knowledge and skills on Project Cycle Management Result Based Management (RBM), Problem Tree Analysis, Situation Analysis, Logical Framework Analysis (LFA), and Monitoring and Evaluation required for result-based projects.

Fr. (Dr.) Jolly Puthenpura, Assistant Executive Director, Caritas India inaugurated the workshop and appreciated the participants for giving a such positive response to the Caritas India workshop. Fr. Jolly in his opening message gave an overview of the mode of functioning in social services from the past and the present scenario. He beautifully mentioned that service to the poor should always be the focus of our mission. He also explained the challenges ahead and urged them to prepare for the future. He said that while reflecting from the donors’ perspective, only a scientific and well-designed/developed project proposal will help the donors get convinced to support the project. He admitted that if the organization develops a proposal with better clarity, the implementation of the project is very easy, and the attained goals can be achieved in the given timeline.

Dr Haridas explained various components of Project Formulation and explained different terms with their importance like Project Cycle Management and Result Based Management. Mr. Bijoy Joseph, working as an Impact Manager for Quest Alliance, Bengaluru was the main facilitator of the workshop. Using a participatory approach, he conducted the sessions on various aspects of project formulations. He mainly discussed the concepts of Impact, Outcome, Output, Activity, Indicators, Logical Framework Matrix (LFM), Monitoring and Evaluation. There were group discussions and presentations from the participants.

Fr. (Dr.) Paul Moonjely, Executive Director of Caritas India encouraged the participants to practice the learnings to get rewarded from the workshop. He said that Caritas India is grateful to the participants for accepting the invitation and making the event possible. He assured the participants, that Caritas India will follow up to learn the results and impact of the workshop.

Fr. (Dr.) Stephen Alathara, Director, CCBI Centre, Bengaluru, encouraged the participants and said that in any of the projects, focus to be given to the poor. Citing the example of the ‘Shalom’ channel, and ‘Matha’ channel, he said that resource mobilization is possible when people work with commitment and dedication. Dr. Haridas, in charge of CIDAL, coordinated the workshop with the support of Mr. Robert D Souza, the State Program Associate, Karnataka.